Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3: specifications, photos and reviews

An interesting motherboard model appeared on the market in 2008. It now became fashionable to collect the system on its own, to select steep devices for it, and then the motherboards were less popular, as many users could easily purchase the assembled system and think about compatibility, the availability of some special connectors, etc.

The Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 board, despite the support of the budget system logic from the "red", was in the expensive segment. It was connected, as always, with the availability of improved parameters, capabilities and new technologies.

Packaging

The novelty was packed usually, in a simple branded box with bright graphic elements. We have a white box with a green box, the main advantages of the model, the series and supported processors are shown in front. Behind the specifications a lot more. Here and the type of memory, available connectors, various technologies and functions Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3. The characteristics though are presented, but in a compressed format.

Inside the box there was not something unusual or new. Although everything is necessary here. In addition to the instructions and manual, they placed a driver disk, a pair of Serial ATA cables, one FDD and UltraDMA, and a blank for the interface panel.

Arrangement of elements

The motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 was correct. Elements on it are arranged well, nothing hinders the assembly and installation of the platform in the body. Although here you can find flaws. For example, not all users liked the location of the power contact, which is now not on the edge of the board. Also, the FDD slot was unsuccessfully located, which became lower and "sat down" under PCI.

The north and south bridges are protected by radiators. They are compact, so do not think that such a passive cooling system will be enough to fully use the system. Nevertheless, the presence of aluminum radiators pleases, and if you add them a good cooler, the stability of the motherboard is assured. And for those who are going to experiment with overclocking, buying a cooling system should be the first.

Details

Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 V 1.0 worked with the AMD SB600 chip. It cooperated with four Serial ATA ports at 3 Gb / s. In this case, you could use arrays, one slot for an IDE pair, and a dozen USB connectors. It is worth noting that four of them were inside. There was also a color designation, which facilitated the installation of modules.

The platform accommodated two PCI slots, two PCIe x1 and one PCIe x16. Not bad at this time, it turned out a sound system that works on an eight-channel codec. The connector supports both HDA and AC'97 in this case. We worked on processing the audio codec, now the disgruntled users who received the burned capacitors became smaller.

There was a place on the board and network controller, which supported several modes, among which there was also 1000 Mbit / s. The power of the crystal worked thanks to a four-phase circuit. By the way, food on the platform is also of high quality. It was assembled with polymer capacitors, placed chokes with ferromagnetic cores. And if now this situation is not surprising, then in 2008 the use of such a design was an excellent addition to the stable operation.

Interface Panel

In general, the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 V 1.0 board is quite complete and self-sufficient. The characteristics helped this model break free into the sales leaders. Users also noted the presence of all necessary connectors. So, on the panel there was a pair PS / 2, designed for keyboard and mouse. USB-slots in total, as mentioned before, was 10, but six pieces were taken out to the outer panel - and that's enough.

There were two S / PDIFs here, IEEE ports are implemented as six-pin and four-pin ports. RJ45 helped establish a network connection. There was a serial COM and three pairs of audio connectors.

By the way, the board itself also had connectors, among which was a place to install a cooler, a four-pin slot for the cooler was almost near the chip itself, which indicated the need to install a cooling system separately on the entire board and separately for the crystal. For cooling in the housing, the connectors were equipped with three contacts.

Support

The motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 got a north bridge, presented AMD 770, and the southern one - AMD SB600. The connector of the crystal is designed for the Socket AM2 + format. The platform could be installed with a dozen processors. So, among them there were AMD Phenom FX, Athlon 64 FX, X2 Dual-Core, Sempron and others.

The motherboard also worked in conjunction with DDR2. And on the board there were four places, but a two-channel connection was supported, with the help of which it was possible to dial up to 16 GB.

The chipset itself was configured to cooperate with the HyperTransport 3.0 bus, which generally worked with a frequency of up to 2600 MHz, and if you buy a Phenom chip, it is needed for correct operation.

Adjustment

To configure the parameters of the motherboard, you need to go into the BIOS. This menu allows you to improve the parameters of the model, make it more productive and adjust for yourself. But in general, all parameters in BIOS are designed for overclocking experiments with Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3.

To adjust the processor technology, you need to select the Cool'n'Quiet Virtualization menu. The processor multiplier can also be adjusted in 0.5 increments, with its range starting at 5. The system bus frequency can be adjusted from 200 to 500 MHz and also change in 1 MHz increments. There is a divider for memory, which is designed for models with Phenom.

There is a setting for the HyperTransport parameter. You can adjust the bus frequency to 1 GHz in 200 MHz increments, and also change the bit depth from 8 to 16 and back. There is a whole range of voltage changes that comes to the memory, north and south bridges, to the processor.

As time has shown, if you understand well with BIOS, you can achieve a good overclocking potential of the system. If there were any critical values, they were marked in red, which immediately set the boundaries of the changes.

I liked the Hardware Monitor section as well, in which it was most convenient to monitor the CPU and the board itself, as well as the CPU cooler speed and others, if any. There are three hull fans in total. The parameters of the current supply were also indicated in the menu. From here it was possible to indicate the critical temperature of heating, the value of the rotation of the coolers, to set the automatic adjustment of the speed of the blades,

Utilities

The manufacturer did not equip Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 with a huge number of useful and not very useful utilities. Of the most popular there is AMD OverDrive. It allows you to manually overclock, monitor the system without going into the BIOS, and doing everything from the desktop. Interestingly, depending on the chip chosen, it was possible to obtain extended or shortened adjustment parameters.

EasyTune 5 Pro is also a good firmware. This software will help to find out the temperature on the main components of the board, it is also possible to control the speed of the fan or help the system to improve the frequency response. By the way, many experts believe that such software overclocking will help beginners, since the process itself is more or less automated.

Testing

Naturally, this model was tested, which showed good results and overall the competitiveness of this board. In the games of that time, the fee allowed to show 80-90 FPS, which is quite enough for the shooters of those times.

Overclocking

Ovrekloking this model should be done with high-quality cooling. The process of improvement in general was quite stable and without any mistakes. Problems can only occur if the voltage is incorrectly set, in which case the system will fail and simply shut down. Therefore, the overclocking itself takes a long time, since it is necessary to properly adjust the voltage on the north bridge, increasing it by an average of 0.15 V. In this case, the frequency can be raised to 410 MHz.

Such values make it clear that, on the whole, the board allows you to overclock the processors of even the junior category at their full strength.

Update

After some time, the company decided to release a modified version of this version of Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 rev. 2.0. It can not be said that the variant was very different from the previous one, but nevertheless something new was acquired. The processing in the board design became noticeable, some elements were transferred. The COM port has moved from the rear panel to the lower left corner. Instead of it, a pair of USB was added to the panel.

Increased the number of SATA connectors - from four to six. The second scheme of BIOS is noticeable, the model for the network connection was also updated, and on the lower part of the board there was a reworked power distribution of the chip.

Changes

Interestingly, the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 v.2.0 has changed its characteristics. The South Bridge has been upgraded to the SB700 version, like the entire power system, which has become more reliable and 100% made of solid polymer capacitors.

The number of supported chips has increased, among which there is a line of Phenom FX, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Sempron. At the same time among the supported crystal nuclei there are already forgotten Kuma, Windsor, Lima, Sparta, etc.

Power consumption of the processor - up to 140 W, the frequency of the bus varies from 2 to 5.2 GHz. The audio codec was updated. The amount of memory remains the same, the modules are four pieces, but the system adopts a two-channel architecture.

Reviews

Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 v.2.0 reviews received averages. The first version was praised for its broad capabilities, support for fast memory and important expansion slots. Overclocking is also liked by buyers. There were disgruntled users. Some of them had malfunctions caused by not quite correct power distribution, which was generally corrected in the second version.

Therefore, the second updated version became better. Here already noted the convenient location of the required slots, access to them and the overall placement of components on the board. There were also those who used this model after 6-7 years, which can be considered not entirely correct, as the technologies go forward, which means that the old devices do not find space and leave the market. Hence the discontent of many about the presence of the old sound card Realtek and AC'97.

Both motherboards were marked by the presence of Hyper Transport 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0. Pleased and the presence of all the necessary adapters and additional software. It is also possible to install on the platform four fans, of which three are case-based, and one is designed to cool the processor.